Inside, my parents and Megan were lined up on one side of the kitchen table. They registered surprise at my muddy, waterlogged state and dirty clothes. After apologizing, then trying to make the flat tire sound like a minor hiccup in the day – no sense giving them more ammunition than they already had – I ducked into the utility room to tug on some sweats and pull myself together before returning to the dining area.
The discussion there followed our usual family dynamic – Dad stoic, Mom fretful (dressed for some sort of ladies’ event, judging by the carefully pressed aqua blazer and pants that nicely offset her blue eyes and auburn hair), and Megan, a younger, kinder, gentler image of Mom, trying to mollify, determined that no one should remain unhappy for long. Meanwhile, Dustin sat on a barstool in the corner, his head and shoulders resting against the wall, a glazed-over sheen giving his brown eyes the glassy coolness of denial.
As the discussion of the day’s events oozed forth like meat through a sausage grinder, Dustin focused mostly on the window, then finally mumbled an apology for screwing up everyone’s evening. “It was just, like, a mistake. They came by and asked if I wanted to go out on the boat. I didn’t know they weren’t supposed to have it – the boat, I mean.” His eyes flicked toward me, then held fast, as if he’d remembered that an averted gaze made a story less credible. He’d probably learned that from listening to his father and me.
I can tell you’re lying, Karl. You aren’t even looking at me. Why don’t
you look me in the eye and try to tell me this only happened one time –
that you haven’t been seeing her for months, maybe even years? Tell me you
had nothing at all to do with her divorce. Why don’t you tell me that? See
if you can make me believe it?
For heaven’s sake, Karl.You knew she and Charles were having trouble.
How could you do this? Have you been letting her buy things for her apartment
on the college’s dime? Is that how she’s affording that place . . . all the
nice furniture?
Dustin should never have overheard that conversation. He shouldn’t have witnessed his father trying to lie his way out, begging me not to go public with the truth, warning me that life as we knew it would be over. There was already an ongoing financial inquiry at the college. . . .
Lately, Dustin seemed to be trying to perfect his father’s art of false honesty. The change was heartbreaking, coming from a fourteen-year-old who’d always been the perfect kid, his days filled with places he was supposed to be – soccer practice, guitar lessons, youth group on Wednesdays, worship band rehearsals, a few volunteer projects through the school or the church. “I tried to call you on your cell before I left, but it wouldn’t go through,” he said.
Mother rolled her chin my way, frowning at me from beneath lowered brows, an expression that laid the blame for Dustin’s mishap squarely on me. “I
told
you this . . . this traveling sort of job wasn’t the right thing. For heaven’s sake, Andrea, what is Dustin supposed to do when issues arise, and you’re who knows where, going to some . . . some
appointment
? Half of these lake houses are empty during the week. Dustin doesn’t even have anyone to call if there is an emergency.” Mother failed to mention that the lack of neighborly support was her fault. Filing homeowner’s association complaints about trash cans by the curb, bushes not trimmed at least six inches below windows, noisy lake parties, and boats coming up the cove too fast does not a good neighbor make.
I wanted to counter Mother’s question with,
Tell me what else I
should do, then? I have to work. I have to make a living.
Instead, I stuck to the subject at hand. Dustin. “Dustin knew he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere, and certainly not out in a boat with kids I’ve never even met.” I turned my attention back to Dustin, wishing everyone would leave, so I could get to the bottom of this.
“It’s no big deal,” Dustin offered. “I thought it’d be okay.” He glazed over again, as if he knew how the conversation was going to proceed. Next, we would move to a discussion of my reasons for taking the counseling job instead of going to work at my brother-in-law’s bank. Somehow in our family, we couldn’t seem to do anything but repeat familiar patterns, go over the same talking points until they were like overused chewing gum – tasteless and bland.
As usual, the family meeting ended after we’d rehashed all the normal issues.
From the foyer, Dad surveyed the cars in the drive and pointed out that he’d have to take my vehicle and leave his for me.“You can’t be driving around the hills with no spare. I’ll have all the tires looked at while I’ve got it.” He offered his keys, and I gave him mine. No point being stubbornly independent. I had to be at work tomorrow, and I didn’t have a clue where to get a tire fixed.
As Mom and Dad disappeared down the drive, Megan stood with me in the entryway. She apologized for having brought the folks in on Dustin’s mishap. “It just scared me to death when Dustin called. I knew it’d take me forever to get here from Dallas.” She leaned close to me, keeping the conversation between us. In the kitchen, Dustin was sliding wearily off his barstool, investigating the sunburn on his shoulder, sucking air through his teeth when he touched it. “I thought Mom and Dad could get here sooner than I could. If I’d known they were still on the way back from Round Rock, I never would have called them. I tried to head them off after I made it here, but, of course, they came on. I didn’t mean to cause another big, hairy family meeting.”
“I know,” I said, but Meg looked worried, as if she was afraid I didn’t believe her. A past history of intense sibling competitiveness never goes away completely. “Thanks for picking him up, Meg. I’m sorry for the hassle. I really don’t understand what Dustin was thinking.” After nearly an hour of family conversation, I was still confused. “Did you find out what, exactly, he was in trouble for?”
Meg’s slim shoulders lifted, then dropped. “Well, from what Dustin said, one of the kids took the family boat for a spin without permission, and they got nabbed for climbing the Scissortail. When I made it to the Waterbird, the clerk was busy with a tour bus and Dustin was sitting over in one of the booths. He just told them he was leaving and walked out with me. He said the whole thing had been blown out of proportion by some game warden guy on a power trip.”
She punctuated the sentence with a helpless look. Meg had no experience with teenagers. Her twins, still too little to converse, were no doubt safely home in Cleburne with Meg’s mother-in-law, who not only adored Meg but also provided grandkid daycare two days a week while Meg worked at Oswaldo’s bank. Just like everything else about my little sister, her in-law relationships were perfect.
I gave her a hug and thanked her, trying to absolve the guilt I felt for harboring secret resentments. Misery loves company, and my little sister wasn’t very good company. She never had been. She was too good at everything. She was the blue-eyed, petite golden child, and I, by contrast, was the one with my father’s kinky brown hair, brown eyes, and square chin. Growing up, Meg turned heads with her bright smile and auburn locks. She led cheers at the football games, wore the cute little pleated-skirt uniform, and turned all the boys’ heads. Boys aren’t too interested in gangly, flat-chested, clarinet players, no matter how good the band sounds in the stands.
I walked her out and then stood on the path among Mother’s collection of bird-friendly plants and seed feeders. One of the best things about our summers at the lake had always been the birds. Mother adored them. She knew all about them, and being something of an amateur photographer, she loved to photograph them. The interior of the lake house was decorated in bird-related paraphernalia – Mother’s photographs; empty bird’s nests she’d spirited from trees; delicate, colorful feathers carefully pressed into shadowbox frames; tiny eggs no bigger than the tip of a finger, rescued from the grass, painstakingly dried and shellacked for preservation.
The birds were proof in some way that Mother did have a tender side. Beyond that, her study of them gave us something to talk about. Mother could identify each and every type of the enormous variety of fowl that migrated through Moses Lake. Most of our good moments together were spent taking long walks through the woods with binoculars and field manuals. Mother preferred me to Megan for this endeavor. I was quieter, she said.
As Megan climbed into her Lexus and drove away, her Junior League decal glinting in the sun, a lonely, miserable, helpless sensation swelled inside me. I knew better than to stay out there on the sidewalk alone with it. Now was no time for an emotional crash. I still needed to talk with Dustin, find out what really happened, and try to get a handle on what was going through his mind when he decided to leave without permission, in the company of a bunch of kids he’d apparently just met.
But in truth, I didn’t want to be counselor, or Mom, or single parent right now. I felt bone-tired and weary, exhausted in body and spirit. I wanted to turn the problem over to someone else – say,
I
handled it last time. It’s your turn,
the way I could have in the past.
But now there was only half. Half a parental team. Half a family, trying to re-form into a new whole.
In the house, the living room was empty, and I could hear the shower running in the hallway bathroom. I knocked, but Dustin either couldn’t hear or wasn’t answering. The door was locked, of course. Short of breaking it down, I didn’t have much choice but to keep an eye on the hallway and wait. I passed the time by e-mailing the office to let the secretary, Bonnie, know that I’d need to reschedule my missed afternoon appointments. Sending the e-mail off into cyberspace, I dreaded its arrival at the office. I’d look completely incompetent.
My stomach tightened and started churning, and I laid my head back against the chair, watching the birds enjoy bits of bread Mother had scattered on the deck. A misty rain started falling, and the weight of the day overtook me. I let my eyes close.
Just for a minute,
I thought.
Just for a minute. . . .
When I awoke, the birds were gone, and the house was dark. In the room with the bunk beds – the room that was still decorated in the soft rose and pale green hues of my childhood – Dustin was curled up, softly snoring with his face mashed sideways against the pillow. One long, sinewy leg hung off the mattress, a foot twitching just slightly, as if he were a napping hound dreaming about chasing squirrels.
He knew I wouldn’t have the heart to wake him from a sound sleep. He knew I’d stand over his bed, think about how peaceful he looked, how young, so much like my baby boy. So smart. So handsome. So perfect. An incredible kid who’d always been honest, and tenderhearted, and smart, and faithful, and bold . . .
And now . . . damaged?
Broken? Fearful? Angry? Bitter? Closed off?
Tears welled in my eyes, and before I sensed it coming, a gush of emotion wrenched from my stomach and pressed out a sob. The sound split the silence, causing Dustin to jerk in his sleep, blink and rise in a clumsy push-up.
“Mom?” he whispered, his eyes narrow slits in the stream of light from the hallway.
“Shhh . . .” The sound shuddered, my lips trembling as it passed. I swallowed hard, trying to force the emotion down my throat, tuck it away where it wouldn’t hurt anyone. “Everything’s all right.” I wished that were true. More than anything else about our old life, I missed the feeling of security, the confidence that everything was fine, that tomorrow would be the same as today. The same routine, the same people. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to worry about.
Dustin collapsed onto the pillow again, exhaling a long sigh. I pulled the sheet over his shoulders, touched his hair, remembered the days when I’d fretted over homework he didn’t do exactly right, or a friend who’d turned against him in school, or soccer games in which he didn’t make the starting lineup. How many times had I knelt by his bed and prayed that the world would be easy on him, that everything would go his way?
How could I not have seen that the biggest danger wasn’t outside our house – it was inside?
I went to bed and lay awake, my mind doing what it usually did – sifting through the past, rehashing history, trying to understand it, until finally I fell asleep. In my dreams I was sailing on the lake, the boat, a catamaran, skimming over the water on a clear day, the sails popping, stretching in a stiff wind. The freedom was golden. Closing my eyes, I let a cool breeze stroke my hair. I felt larger than life. Indestructible. Unbroken.
In the shelter of the Big Boulders, the wind died, and the boat floated along on the current, traveling under Eagle Eye Bridge, into the river channel. I felt no need to adjust the sails. The current knew where it was going. It was taking me someplace I was meant to be.
Overhead on the bridge, a rust-spotted pickup rattled by. In the passenger-side window, a little girl turned my way, her blue eyes curious, her dark hair swirling in the breeze. When the truck stopped, the little girl slipped out the passenger door and skipped across the deck of the bridge. She was too young to be up there alone. It wasn’t safe.
Laughing, she climbed onto the railing, moved along it with her arms outstretched like a tightrope walker’s.
I screamed for her to stop, but she couldn’t hear me. The truck was backing up now, rattling toward her. If it shook the railing, she might fall. . . .
I adjusted the sails, tried to move the boat underneath her, but the current was pulling me the other way.